The Drama Behind Documentaries
When the real world gets in the way of filmmaking, the director is in for some tough choices ─ experiences and recollections from the "Shooting Suspects" panel.
Laura Poitras, Jörg Taszman, Anat Zuria and Fredrik Gertten.
“I am a storyteller, but a political person”, said Swedish director Fredrik Gertten at the opening of “Shooting Suspects: Trusts and Risks in Documentary Films,” a Berlinale Talent Campus panel discussion. In BANANAS!*, showing in the Berlinale Culinary Cinema, Gertten puts the politics of Dole, the world’s leading banana producer, under scrutiny, documenting a lawsuit brought on behalf of twelve Nicaraguan workers claiming that Dole knowingly used substances that caused cancer and infertility. After seeing the film’s trailer, Dole slapped the filmmaker with a cease-and-desist warning and a lawsuit that resulted in sponsors pulling their support and the Los Angeles Film Festival removing BANANAS!* from its competition programme.
Hosted by Jörg Taszman, the session also included documentary filmmakers Laura Poitras and Anat Zuria, who have both come to the Berlinale with documentaries that have raised a fair share of controversy. The issue that connects Zuria’s BLACK BUS, Poitras’ THE OATH and Gertten’s film is the possibility of extreme reactions to their subject matter. Zuria made the Talents aware of the courage in her two female protagonists’ borderline-heretical revolt against sexual oppression in Israel, whereas Poitras explained the dangers she faced in shooting a documentary revolving around Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard.
Laws and regulations vary dramatically from country to country, and it is the filmmakers’ initial task to get acquainted with the legal limits they are facing. As Zuria pointed out, crossing those limits is a risk of the trade that has to be accepted if a documentary is to be made.
All three films followed their characters through hardships that caused emotional outbursts often too intense to be shown. The filmmakers agreed that in such situations they prefer to leave the camera rolling, but that they make sure to preserve the protagonists’ dignity in the editing room by deleting scenes that may humiliate them or compromise their safety.
Reducing the emotionally charged scenes to a minimum is necessary to avoid the sense of exploitation. Though it may be disturbing that money is being earned on somebody else’s suffering, the directors’ primary concern has to be the film itself. Still, the three experts acknowledge the need to treat protagonists with an honesty that will repay the trust that the filmmakers received. The final product may not comply with the protagonists’ desires, but it is up to the storytellers to present their own interpretation of events.
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